Exploring the dynamic linkages between tourism growth and environmental pollution: new evidence from the Mediterranean countries

ABSTRACT

The present study explores the impact of tourism on environmental pollution using a comprehensive set of air pollutants, namely CO₂, CO, NO_x, SO₂, PM_2.5, and PM₁₀, in a multivariate framework under the context of the Mediterranean countries. The panel cointegration tests indicate that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between environmental pollution, energy consumption, economic development and tourism growth. The tourism-induced EKC hypothesis is validated for four out of six air pollution indicators in the Southern Mediterranean countries, whereas in the Northern Mediterranean region we fail to document any evidence supporting the hypothesis. In addition, tourism growth has a differential impact on different air pollution indicators across regions. The major findings from the panel Granger causality tests show that bidirectional causality exists between four air pollutants (CO₂, NO_x, SO_2, and PM_2.5) and tourism and unidirectional causality runs from CO and PM₁₀ to tourism growth in the Northern Mediterranean. In contrast, there is a feedback relationship between environmental pollution (CO and NO_x) and tourism growth and one-way causality running from environmental pollution (CO₂, SO_2, PM_2.5, and PM₁₀) to tourism development in the Southern Mediterranean.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental pollution
• air pollutants
• particulate matter emissions
• sulfur dioxide emissions
• tourism
• tourism-induced EKC hypothesis

JEL Codes:

• C23
• L83
• Q53

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions given on the earlier draft of this paper. Any remaining errors and omissions are of our own responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The top five tourist destinations in the Mediterranean are France, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece, all of which locates at the northern rim of the Mediterranean.

2 CO, NO_x, and SO₂ are all poisonous gases which can lead to breathing difficulties and respiratory problems. In addition, it is reported that PM_2.5 exposure leads to more than three million death each year. Human exposure to particulate matter is associated with a range of serious health issues such as lung cancers, cardiovascular disease and birth defect.

3 Northern Mediterranean countries also differentiate Southern Mediterranean countries in terms of economic power. Countries on the northern rim of Mediterranean are European Union countries while countries on the southern rim are not. In this sense, Southern Mediterranean countries can also be classified as non-EU countries.

4 Following chemicals and fuels, tourism was considered the third largest international trade sector in the world (UNWTO, 2018).

5 There is a total of 22 countries in the region. However, 18 countries are included in the analysis due to data availability. Ten countries are classified as Northern Mediterranean countries which is composed of Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the rest of eight countries including Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia, are classified as the Southern Mediterranean countries. Given the relatively small number of observations used in the present study, therefore the results should be interpreted with caution.

6 We report the cointegration results between CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, economic growth and tourism development in Table 4. Due to space constraints, we don’t report the results for other air pollutants. Untabulated results show that the results remain qualitatively unchanged.

7 The turning points for other air pollution indicators can be calculated in the same way as CO and the results are available upon request.

8 For the results reported in Table 6 and Table 7, we estimate each air pollutant separately and report the combined results in Tables 6 and 7. Since our focus is on different air pollution indicators, the causality between energy consumption, economic development, and tourism growth are based on the results of CO₂ emissions. Untabulated results remain qualitatively unchanged for other types of air pollutants.

Additional information

Funding

Jing Gao acknowledges the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC No. 71803139) and Lei Zhang acknowledges the financial support from Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation, China (ZR2015GQ005).